Two Are Better Than One
by thelittletree
Summary: Based on an established VT relationship. Married, with a son no longer living at home, they're forced to face one more consequence of mortality...one Vincent might understand better than he thinks.


Disclaimer: Don't own Final Fantasy VII, or Vincent, or Tifa. Just inserting them into the machine of my imagination and watching what pops out.

Two Are Better Than One

by: thelittletree

(No real excuse for this drabble, except I love writing about them at this stage: it's perfect that nothing's ever perfect! This was a scene that was going to go into my Vignettes before I ended up writing 'Pillow Talk This is Not'. Writing both of them around the same time, and both seemed to say exactly the same things about Tifa aging, so I chose the other one because it followed the theme better…or something. Maybe I just liked the idea of them snuggling in bed :P Anyway…this one is now finished, too. Here it is. Yup. So, it'll probably get shunted into my Vignettes someday. I just didn't want to screw up the timeline of _that_, too.)

When I start to cross the line  
You just seem to read my mind  
And then you bust me  
Then turn around and trust me  
Come to the rescue  
I'll do the same for you

Two Are Better Than One, Petra

* * *

"This is like when I cracked my ribs," she muttered faintly, and he heard the sluicing rain of dripping bathwater as she lifted a hand to her face.

"Is it in your eyes?"

"No. I just mean it reminds me." She flipped a dangling bang beaded with suds away from her forehead and tilted her chin, watching the ripples as she dipped her fingers in and out of the surface of the water.

Vincent continued to soap through her greyish hair with his fingers, taking care to wash the hollows around her ears and above the base of her neck. He'd almost forgotten, he realized, about those baths. Helping her into the tub and scrubbing carefully at her scalp while Jordan, only days old at the time, had sat quietly and with eyes wide open at the liquid warmth around him, supported in her lap. Two baths for the price of one, and despite her injuries she'd done most of it herself, even managing to regularly soak him out of both his shirt and any nicotine withdrawal-induced bad moods that had come her way.

She'd had so much more hair back then, though. He wondered if maybe that was why it hadn't triggered the memory.

"It drove me crazy." She made a sound that was almost like a laugh, sharp with something that made him hold his tongue, and flicked vehemently at the taps. "You doing this everyday."

He turned on the taps to fill the jug they'd taken to leaving at the side of the tub. The spray momentarily washed down his arm and he shifted the towel on the floor over with his knee to catch the trickle from his elbow. "Head back," he directed her, and waited until she'd closed her eyes to start rinsing the shampoo out of her hair.

She wiped the excess from her face when he'd finished and wordlessly took the towel he handed her. Vincent declined to notice when she accidentally let a corner of it fall into the water.

"I shouldn't say that, should I?"

Not 'I shouldn't have said that'. Her apologies had all taken the same tone lately; she wasn't really sorry because she was angry, maybe a little bitter, even a little envious.

"I should be grateful to you."

Not she _was _grateful. She _should _be. Because she wasn't really grateful that he had strong bones when hers were brittle enough that when she slipped down the last couple of stairs, instead of laughing it off, she broke her arm and was forced to wear a very water-unfriendly cast for six weeks. It was hard to be grateful for that.

She hadn't been grateful back then, either, when she'd needed help feeding Jordan and changing him and getting him to bed. At the time, he hadn't really been in any state of mind to take her frustration, and her strange mood swings had led to some of their harshest arguments. Now, at least, he'd learned to wait for the moments she realized how unfair she was being, and she would cry and genuinely apologize for things she'd said. He stood without a word and held his hand out for her to take. Her eyes busy anywhere but his face, she took his fingers and tried to pull herself up.

She would hurt herself one day, trying too hard, and he almost couldn't feel any sympathy for that future moment. His left hand had been in the water long enough that it had absorbed some of the heat, so he knew the metal wasn't cold when she flinched away from his touch. It was the help she was recoiling from.

"I can do this," she murmured, and she scowled when he didn't listen.

He thoroughly towelled her hair once she was standing on the bathmat and then left her to do the rest. His shirt he'd left in the bedroom, and he'd shrugged into it before she came through the doorway.

"Are you hungry?"

She glanced up at him, eyes still searching for an argument to pick up on. He half expected an annoyed retort to the question he'd given as little inflection as possible, but after a moment she lowered her gaze. "Yes, a bit."

When it was like this between them, she never dressed while he was in the room, as if he hadn't just seen her body in the bathtub. It was a barrier to intimacy, he knew, the shield of her insecurity that she rarely ever let down completely, because a glance in the mirror could tell her that, at fifty-seven, she didn't look anything like the Tifa who matched the twenty-seven year old who shared her bed. No matter how often he told her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that he wouldn't have wanted her to stay young, sharing in his curse, for anything in the world.

He did up the last of his buttons and started toward the door. Anything might happen on a day like this, and he wasn't exactly surprised when she stopped him before he could head downstairs.

"Vincent."

He almost wanted to interrupt her, to tell her it was all right before she got a chance to say anything, because he knew that frustrated her. But he didn't. He turned to glance at her. And the look in her eyes made him glad he hadn't given in to his first impulse, even if she turned her head away after a moment to look at her dresser.

"I'm sorry I got angry."

He let a second drag by before he nodded, and he was immediately sure that he didn't want her to see him swallow the lump in his throat.

Most of the time it had been wonderful, was wonderful, being with her. She gave, and had given him so many things he'd wanted all his life, some even before he'd known he'd wanted them. But there were always the inevitable days when they were both only human and subject to their emotions and fears, like being subject to the occasional thunderstorm. Some days now (and he'd learned to hate these days) she hated that he didn't age, and he hated that she couldn't forget about it.

And he hated the days she made him want to remind her that he could put up his walls, too. He hated them most of all.

* * *

Breakfast was a quiet affair, as she ate and he tried to make himself interested in the paper. Afterward, she picked up her dishes and went to take his empty mug.

Such a simple thing. He could've let it go without a move, a word, because it was only a mug and if it broke it broke and she would be sorry. Broken open across the floor, and he would comfort her and she would cry until they were laughing together about the absurdity of it all.

But something made him raise his fingers to her wrist, his eyes unyieldingly to her face. "Leave it, Tifa."

"Vincent - "

"Leave it." Something in him jumped in alarm as he realized how tight his grip was becoming, but he swallowed the reaction down and simply loosened his fingers.

But Tifa had noticed, she couldn't _not _have noticed, and he saw the tears building in her eyes, incredulous, confused, slashed open by the momentary flash of hatred she'd interpreted beneath his stubborn will. She jerked her arm away automatically, a body protecting itself from harm.

And that _hurt_. In the moment she raised her chin, drawing back from tears, proud and stubborn and unchangeably mortal, he saw the frustrated tense of her muscle. And was almost sorry when she didn't slap him.

She left the room.

He took a deep breath, felt _them _roiling, felt the frailty of the newspaper in his fingers, so brittle, delicate. It was frightening how much control it took not to use what power there was to rip the pages of unspoken words into pieces.

* * *

He came back later to have a shower, once everything in the particular radius he'd chosen was dead. And not just dead: unrecognizable. _They_ fed off of him. His anger, his frustration, the pain of loving and being reminded that he couldn't change what was fact and that maybe he would have to leave, to keep her happy, to keep her safe…

She was in the bedroom as he passed, tucked under the blankets and reading, her cast resting comfortably on his pillow. Calm, collected, herself; not at all bothered, it seemed, by anything, as if this day, the weeks of days before it, hadn't happened the way they had. Something about that made him ache for memories: like one day he'd come home from a hunt, still feeling contaminated…but she'd smiled, as good as beckoning, and he'd come into the room, onto the bed, worming up beside her. And had leaned into her touch and felt so accepted, comfortable, _loved_, like nothing could ever, ever change and they would always be so, so happy.

"Tifa."

He wasn't aware he'd spoken until she glanced up, and the look on her face before everything came rushing back made him remember the love. Oh, the love.

She glanced away.

"Are you going to have a shower?"

It had turned into a labyrinth of familiar conversations, snaking deviously around the real issue, never coming to the beginning or end.

"Yes."

She went back to her reading. "There's more soap in the drawer, and the towels are on top of the hamper."

"I know."

He didn't need her help, it was obvious. He hesitated in the doorway until it was clear she wasn't going to look up again. He closed the door and headed into the bathroom.

* * *

Thread in, thread out, thread in, thread out.

It wasn't yet seven. The sun had been shining in bursts through the drapes as it had climbed to peek over the various summits of the Nibel mountains, occasionally slanting a too curious eye at the man who had been sitting for so long on the carpet, under the lamp, trying to do it by himself. Almost ten arguments rested on the outcome.

The button slipped out of his smooth, frictionless metal grip and he swore this time under his breath. It was a shirt, like others he had, no more to him than the rest; something to cover his skinny bones. He tried again, and when that failed, tried again.

The shirt ended up behind the couch, the button somewhere in a corner.

* * *

That afternoon, after she'd changed from work, she came to sit with him on the couch. It surprised him. Her gaze was determined but vaguely inscrutable, and it immediately made him want to get up, away from what she was going to say. He'd hurt her, she couldn't trust him, it wasn't working, maybe they would be better off apart, she would explain things to Jordan…

Her fingers were around his wrist before he realized that she'd moved. The soft warmth of her skin made something somewhere break a little inside him as he recognized just how long it had been since she'd really _touched_ him. But his body still made the automatic attempt to pull away, very gently, as his mind tried to settle what this was about. She kept her grip, however, and her expression, without anger, looking for something, warned him that this was important. He was not to pull away.

He waited, expecting anything. Not sure he was ready for anything.

"What can you do like this?" Her voice was gentle, but there was something faintly, conspicuously absent from her tone. That crucial, once absolute faith and confidence, he thought regrettably. That trust in a love, regardless of differences and hurts and angry words. How had it come to this, he wondered, so simply, so quickly? What had they been letting go of, as limbs had broken, as metal had reasserted its dangerous presence in place of flesh?

He frowned a little. "I can't get up."

"So what can you do?"

"I don't understand."

She pursed her lips, but he couldn't sense any real anger or impatience behind the gesture and it staved off his own. "What can I do like this, Vincent, while I'm holding your wrist?" she asked quietly, eyes intent, willing him to try.

Her left arm was in a cast, her right hand holding his wrist. Her eyes were unbelievably beautiful, he'd almost forgotten.

"Nothing," he answered, and swallowed reflexively, noting with a little discomfort how subdued his own voice had become. "Your arm is broken."

"And where does that leave us?" She raised her cast slightly and then rested it against her leg, mimicking the position of his metal arm, mostly shrouded in his sleeve.

He understood her then very well. "With only one good arm each." As time marched toward them, scythe raised, a figure to inspire dread on the horizon. "Defenceless, if you're holding my wrist."

The change in her expression told him she hadn't exactly expected that level of insight right away. She took a breath, lowered her eyes and released his wrist.

He felt a stab of uneasy loss as the warmth of her fingers slipped away, and hoped this was going where it seemed to be going. How many times could he have taken the initiative to apologize for being, perhaps, a little too inflexible? Too many to number now…

"If you're holding my wrist," she repeated quietly. She shifted a little and pulled something out of her pocket. It was a black button.

She lifted her head again, unable to meet his gaze steadily. It was hard, he could feel, after all of the avoidance, to suddenly be so honest.

"I'm at fault, too, for pushing you away. I know I can be a pain in the ass to take care of. But it wouldn't have happened so much if you hadn't tried to force me… I'm not _dying_…" Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile or a frown at the word, as if she wasn't sure whether or not it was funny. "Do you understand? You have to know by now that I need to do some things on my own, even if there are things I can't do." She placed the button on the cushion between them. "Just like you. You have to admit, it would've driven you crazy if I'd ever treated that metal arm like it was a broken bone."

She'd dropped her eyes during the last words and now took a breath, as if the conversation had taken more energy than what they'd wasted in not talking. And then she stood.

He could've let her go. She'd said her piece, she wasn't expecting more right away. There were three more weeks before she was completely healed. And aging was just a part of who she was, just like the damnable arm was a part of him.

Her fingers were warm, and so familiar. He waited until she turned around.

"I can't put that button back on myself."

Her mouth opened up in a slight smile and she moved to face him fully, gently swinging their hands together. He could feel the flicker of returning intimacy like a tentative candle in the last breeze before a window is shut, and it was like a beacon in a dark he hadn't realized had grown quite so dark. "Is that why I stepped on it this morning in the hallway?"

He made a show of thinking, as if he needed it to remember the exact moment his frustration had gotten the better of him. "I didn't realize it had gotten that kind of distance." This shouldn't have been the time for any jokes, he had enough sense to realize; but they'd gotten so _good_ at it.

She grinned suddenly. Fifty-seven, but her eyes were never far away from twenty-three. "You must've been pretty well at the end of your rope to have just thrown it."

"No, no. Thread, Tifa. You can't sew with rope."

She scowled and dropped his hand before pivoting away. "It's a turn of phrase. For that, you can do it yourself."

He sat up, truly questioning for a moment whether his flippancy might've made her angry again. "Where are you going?"

"To have a bath," she called over her shoulder a moment before she disappeared into the hallway.

Considering what she had said only minutes ago, he wasn't sure how to respond. She would have a hard time washing herself with one arm while trying to keep the other out of the water…but if that was what she wanted, the chance to do it alone, he supposed he could let her…

"Would you like to keep me company?"

He was on his feet before he was completely aware he'd moved. "If you want."

"Sure, why not?"

He sat by the tub as she talked about her day and painstakingly lathered the soap in one hand. More than once he wanted to reach out a hand to brush a strand of hair from her forehead, wipe away a trace of foam she'd missed in a rinse, ghost his thumb over the smiling corner of her mouth. But he waited.

At least until she'd thoroughly soaked his shirt, and most of him through it.

And, despite her laughing protests, Tifa's quick wash turned into a leisurely, very necessary bath for two with more than enough good hands between them.


End file.
